


so you wanna be a soldier

by downthedarkpath



Series: bad blood [2]
Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Family Dynamic, Fluff & Angst, Found Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, War, War AU, ambiguous ending, sbi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-17 13:15:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29966961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/downthedarkpath/pseuds/downthedarkpath
Summary: They’re all family forged in battle, forged in the hearts of dying stars, brothers borne of spilled blood.Wilbur thinks of what Phil would say. Of the way Phil would look at him, like he was a god. Like he could hold flame in his palm and ichor in his veins and never, ever die.
Relationships: Wilbur Soot & Technoblade & TommyInnit & Phil Watson
Series: bad blood [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2204082
Comments: 13
Kudos: 45





	so you wanna be a soldier

**Author's Note:**

> title from [bad blood](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84DeM8CYxqU) by birdeatsbaby
> 
> hope u enjoy :]

They are on the coast of France and the nights are long. They are cold and dark, and there are more rats than people. Wilbur falls asleep to their scuttles like they are hymns.

He hasn’t seen his family, his boys, since April. Since there was spring rain on the window sills and coffee stacked in the cupboard and eggs cooking on the stove. Wilbur digs into the pocket on his fatigues and pulls out his cigarettes, sticking one between his teeth and curling his lip around it.

His socks are damp. He leans forward to pick up a light from the soldier opposite him, offering the tense sort of smile that has sat on his face for most of his deployment.

They all do it, all know that smile intimately - they’re all family forged in battle, forged in the hearts of dying stars, brothers borne of spilled blood.

Wilbur thinks of what Phil would say. Of the way Phil would look at him, like he was a god. Like he could hold flame in his palm and ichor in his veins and never, ever die.

He extends an olive branch to the soldier opposite. He offers one of his oat cakes, the ones he’s been saving since Monday morning because none of them know when their next meal will come. Wilbur breaks one in two, offering half to the soldier.

“Charlie,” the soldier says. He reaches out blood stained fingertips and takes the half. Wilbur can’t look away from the dirt under his nails.

“Wilbur,” he replies. The smile Charlie gives him is tired. “How long have you been here?”

“Two months,” Charlie says. “Far too long, if you ask me.”

The oat cakes are dry. If he was at home, sitting around the table on chairs with unbalanced legs, he’d be smearing sweet jam or marmalade over them. Techno would stick his finger in the jar and lick it, and they’d all pretend like they didn’t see. Phil would smoke his pipe, take one, two, three puffs, and smile at all of them like he had never been more proud.

“I don’t know if we’ll ever get home at this point.”

He wonders how proud Phil is of him now. He thinks of the bodies he’d left in the battlefields yesterday, when they’d stormed a German trench in tin hats and bayonets. He realises he handles guns better than he had ever wanted to.

“Cheers to that,” Charlie says, with the sort of long worn laugh that isn’t a laugh anymore. It isn’t a joke. It sticks in Wilbur’s throat and moulds, like mothballs and cold tea and half rotten apples.

“You got anyone waiting for you?” Wilbur asks. He pulls his water jug out too, swallowing as little as he can to wash down the oat cake.

“Hopefully.” 

“Hopefully?”

Charlie shrugs, “who knows what’ll be left when we get back?”

It’s a good point - one Wilbur hasn’t thought much about. Mostly because he doesn’t want to; doesn’t want to think about how he might get home, the three of them might get home, to nothing but rubble and skeletons.

“I left my missus when I got sent out,” Charlie says, after a beat of silence. Even the fields are quiet. “We got married just before I left, rushed it all after I got the letter. We were going to try for kids. Maybe we still will.”

“You’d give them a good life.”

“That’s a nice thought,” Charlie says. He doesn’t look sad, and Wilbur looks at the numbness in his eyes, the ghosts of mourning. “What about you?”

“I’ve got my brothers,” Wilbur says, quietly. “Two of ‘em. Well, they got sent out just the same as I did. But we’re all gonna go back home, go back to our dad.”

“That sounds nice,” Charlie says. His words are echoed in gunfire. “Real nice.”

“Yeah,” Wilbur says. He swallows around the tension in his throat. His socks are still wet. “Yeah, it is.”

* * *

Techno sits in silence. He looks over the top of the camps at stars that have always been too far away and he misses things he has never put his hands on. The air is warm in the Mediterranean, and he feels it burn ghosts into his skin.

“You alright, mate?”

He looks up - there’s a general there, looking at him with the sort of concern that is so rare these days. “I’m fine, sir.”

“Good,” the general says, offering a smile that isn’t really a smile. Techno doesn’t think he could ever make a smile again. “Stand to it, soldier. We’ll be out of here in no time.”

He doubts it. Techno curls his fingers around his gun, taps the blades he’d been assigned, tucked into the folds of his fatigues, makes sure all of it is still there. The laces on his boots are wearing thin - he feels their fibers stretch when he leans over to tighten them.

His socks are worn, too, stretched and threadbare, working its way up his ankles. He doesn’t know when they’ll next have a chance to do laundry, or visit the baths. Techno shivers, and tries to ignore the ice settling into his veins.

He salutes the general as he passes, feeling a dull burn settle into his bicep. He aches every day now, bones weary. It’s like he’s already got one foot in his grave, and some times, Techno wonders if it would be easier if he was all the way there. His fingertips clench around a phantom gun, pulling phantom triggers and aiming at phantom spirits. They walk through his vision even when he doesn’t look at them, and Techno finds himself haunted by ghosts he hasn’t ever seen.

Their souls follow him, like he’s a guide, their Polaris in an empty sky, halfway to the underworld. He takes their coins even if it hurts, even if it isn’t worth it. He kills quickly, because war isn’t an honour and dying isn’t bravery.

He receives medals for his weakness, paraded around as courage. He sees the iron looks from his fellow soldiers, whenever he wears it on the breast of his jacket. So he doesn’t - he hides the tin and its ribbon in his deepest pocket, tucked away so eyes won’t see it. He doesn’t know if he’s hiding it from his comrades or himself.

“You look tired, soldier,” someone says to him. Techno doesn’t know their voice, doesn’t recognise them at all. There’s blood running down his forehead, though, dried where they’d run out of medical supplies. It happens far too often these days.

“Aren’t we all?” Techno replies. He hears Wilbur’s voice in his, carries his words in his veins and bleeds gold where he doesn’t.

The soldier laughs, where it isn’t a laugh and it’s more like a sob. “Isn’t that the truth.”

It is. It is the truth, and Techno curls his toes in holey socks and feels the emptiness in his heart and mind and soul where death has stolen everything from him, and it keeps taking and taking and taking even though he has nothing left to give.

“Do you think it’ll ever end?” he finds himself asking, the words sitting sour on his tongue.

The soldier looks at him for a long, long time. Outside, past the camps, he hears screaming where corpses have been laid to rest, and bodies have been left even if their hearts are still beating. There’s only so far they can go.

“If it does,” the soldier says, and Techno hears more than he says, he hears the grievance and the lifetime of horror they’ve lived in a few short months, hidden beneath words that hurt more than Techno realises, “I only hope it ends quickly.”

* * *

Tommy steps onto dry grass in Poland.

His heart aches already, and he’s barely put his hands on a gun yet. His soul hurts with it. These are not memories he’ll forget, even when he wishes he could. 

“Stand tall, soldier,” someone next to him whispers.

“I’m trying,” he whispers back, looking at the man next to him. His coat weighs heavy on his shoulders. The strap for his rifle doesn’t fit properly, and he feels it digging into his back like a branding iron.

“Not doing a very good job,” the soldier replies. When Tommy meets his eye, he grins. It’s the truest grin he’s seen out here. “I’m Quackity. You?”

“Tommy.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Tommy.”

He wishes he could say the same. Instead, Tommy looks at rubbled buildings and craters and bloodstained dirt, and feels bile growl in his stomach.

He stares at massacres and smiles. He stares into the imminent face of death and smiles. He stares at razed land and smiles. There is nothing else to be done. He says, “it’s nice to meet you too,” even when it isn’t.

“You excited to get out there on the battlefield?” Quackity asks him.

Tommy wonders if excited is the right word. “Not really.”

“No?”

“No,” he repeats. He looks away. Quackity’s eyes are cold, worn down in ways he hasn’t seen for a long time. He doesn’t want to look at them for too long.

Quackity is quiet. Their squad starts moving, trekking across empty plains. Tommy falls into place beside him, standing straight up with his arms at his side. “You’re afraid, then?” Quackity guesses.

He says it like it 's an insult. Tommy replies, “aren’t you?”

“What is there to be afraid of?” Quackity says. He spreads his arms like wings, like they aren’t held down by his armour and the weight of his sins. Tommy feels himself suffocating on it. “You see this? The universe is in front of us.”

“What about it?” Tommy asks.

“Don’t you think it’s waiting for us?” Quackity says. His gaze hurts whenever he looks at Tommy.

“No,” Tommy says, “I think it’s waiting for us to leave.”

He has the entire world at his feet, and wherever he steps, he burns.

* * *

Phil sits in a house that has been nothing but ash for a very long time.

He’s alone. His boys have gone off to war, and the only thing left of them is the dust on the mantelpiece. He runs a finger through it, leaving a clear line in the wood.

He holds his pipe in one hand and their letters in the other. In his memory, the scales of the letter opener are burned, deep into tissue. It’s a cauterization that keeps bleeding.

Soot builds up on the walls, yellowing the wallpaper. Phil lights a fire in the living room and chokes on it. The wireless crackles day and night, endless static. He doesn’t listen to it anymore, but it’s voice is the only one he hears.

He hears them, sometimes, standing in the entrance hall. Their footsteps. Smells their cigarette smoke out of Techno’s bedroom window. He can’t tell anymore, if they’re ghosts or if they’re not. 

He walks like a spirit in his own home, and all he sees is his deathbed. Phil puts one hand on the front door and his world falls apart.

**Author's Note:**

> sooo.... let me know your thoughts
> 
> (massive thanks to t and manu for putting up w/ my typing noises in vc while i wrote this. and also for being the sbi blueprint. love u guys)
> 
> now i know i said there would be happy ending, and you know. maybe there is! i dont know. i didnt want to write a reunion scene so i leave you with this. sorry :shrug:
> 
> come say hi on [twitter](https://twitter.com/ERR0RGEO)!


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